Georgia Straight Letters
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Aquarium referendum, plebiscite loss bemoaned
Publish Date: 13-Jul-2006

Regarding your article on the aquarium [“Aquarium pushes expansion”, July 6-13], which mentioned the results of the Vancouver park board meeting of May 29, 2006: as a previous employee of the aquarium, 1976 to 1981, I was dismayed that the vote overturned two previous motions requiring a referendum for expansion plans as well as a citywide plebiscite to be held in the 2008 civic election. The plebiscite would have asked the following yes or no question: “Are you in favour of phasing out the containment of whales and dolphins in Stanley Park?” This would be done with the “goal of testing the public opinion in the interests of long term planning for the next lease renewal with the Vancouver Aquarium, in 2015”. The aquarium argued against this, as it would not give them enough time to get ready for the Olympics.

I believe that the aquarium’s captive mentality wrongly teaches the values of false conservation, dominance over animals, and humans’ inability to correct or change our destructive ways. Instead, we could be investing in both problem-solving techniques using our technological advances and resources by protecting the existing habitat(s) and creatures within them rather than reliance on relocation, except under extreme situations.

Huge educational strides have indeed been made toward animal conservation and awareness, but I would argue that it would have and should have progressed based solely upon autopsy reports on washed-up carcasses, field studies, films, and true rehabilitation incidents, such as oil spills, not through the long-term imprisonment of healthy wild animals.

The passing of the aquarium’s expansion plans without a public referendum allows a further 28.7- percent encroachment upon public park space by what is, essentially, a private business. To complete their final two phases, the aquarium will be asking for multimillion-dollar grants of public money from municipal, provincial, and federal governments. This, I believe, should have been left to a public binding vote, not a suggestion box of ideas on how to do the changes.

I will be at the July 10 park board meeting voicing my opposition of this undemocratic, misguided, and horribly expensive project that does more harm than good. The only pools that are worthy of these animals are the Earth’s.

Keith Edwards / Vancouver